Horseback Riding in Kinsale!

A few weeks back we had a bank holiday that gave us a Monday off so we decided to take advantage of it and go to Kinsale on our day off. Jenna absolutely loves horses so she found us a place to go just outside of Kinsale called Ballinadee Stables. It ended up raining almost all day, but as soon as we got to the stables it cleared up and we were able to go on an hour long ride just around sunset. It was AMAZING! Definitely the best 25E I've spent while I've been here.

We got bored on the hour long bus ride to Kinsale so we started taking stupid pictures.

When we got to the stables we found out that they had puppies there!!!

We got a bit distracted by them.

And continued playing with them as we got ready.

I wanted to take her home sooo badly.


Then they followed us over to the horses.

Jenna and her horse, Jessie.

Me and my horse, Big Boy.

Kelly and her...'horse,' Laddle.

This is Dinny. He was sooo sweet.

Our first glimpse of how beautiful this ride was going to be.

We passed some cows. Luckily we weren't chased by these ones.


Then he led us right into a stream.


Soooo beautiful. I just couldn't stop smiling the entire time.


Kelly and Laddle tended to fall behind a lot...






The fabric started falling of my helmet toward the end.
All four of us and our horses back at the stables.


Laura and her horse, Fernando. Fernando had an eating problem and ended up being put on a leash for most of the ride.

And then back to the puppies!! (I wish someone had mentioned how terrible my hair was after that helmet...)

We had some time to kill before our bus back to Cork so we stopped into a pub for some dinner. We all got some fresh fish chowder. It was amazing!


So that was our very fun afternoon spent riding horses in Kinsale. It was really and truly incredible. I cant wait to go again! (We're going to try to make it back in the spring).

I'm going to try to put up more pictures this week, but dont count on it because I have a paper due, Thanksgiving to host, and we leave very early Saturday morning for London!!!

In other news, my plans for Christmas are officially set. We have all of our hostels, trains, and flights booked and I cant wait! We leave Ireland on Monday the 15th (after spending the night in Dublin) and head to Prague. We're staying in Prague until the 19th when we're taking a train to Vienna. We stay in Vienna until the 22nd when we're taking a train to Budapest. We are staying in Budapest for about a week, until the 28th, then it's back to Dublin, allowing us to be back in Cork with plenty of time to recover before New Year's. It is going to be amazing!!!